Today's Parts Casaulty

Rode "the commute" with The Car Whisperer this morning, taking his preferred route. Just north of Devon/Milwaukee he takes the North Branch Trail/Bikepath. As we started out, he mentioned that there was an oily patch on a turn that was a little slippery. Not able to remember which turn it was, he mentioned that he had lost traction on it several times and had almost gone down. I thought we were in the clear after making the rather sharp left prior to the Caldwell Ave bridge approach... I was wrong. Just after coming down from the bridge there's another sharp left. Brian's about 30' in front of me and cautiously takes the corner... my wheels slip out from under me and I immediately recognized that I was going down.

A few choice profanities later, I get up and realize that the bike's ok aside from a few new scratches... my hip's not so fortunate. I've got a 4" diameter ground beef strawberry just below my hipbone, and I tore some serious holes in my bib shorts.

As we're heading West on Lake Ave in Glenview, I start to hear some rattling... maybe the crash knocked something loose. Thinking it's a bottle cage, we continue on. When we got to the office, I got off the bike and found that I had popped a spoke in my rear wheel. I've had problems with this wheelset in the past, and had just gotten it back from Alex. Since it wasn't wildly out of true, I solicited some ibuprofen from the kind ladies at the health center, and then continued on to the Old School route and back to the city. At the Winnetka 7-11 I stopped to refill my bottles and checked the wheel again. Another spoke. Both nipples are rattling around inside the wheel. Whee.

I open my rear brake and hobble home through the remainder of the North Shore and Evanston... must have been quite a side, bloody and dirty with a wobbly rear wheel. Not bad for 9:30am on a Wednesday.